Funny, because just about every other developed country is doing fine with their absurdly fast/large bandwidth and cheap prices...
You should spend some more time in other countries, you will find unlimited data to be fairly uncommon.
Wrong. Sprints 3G flies as well. It's ATTS awful 3G that stinks, and I highly doubt its due to too much traffic. Verizon and Tmobiles is also far superior to ATTs. I know Luke Wilson says otherwise, but he's wrong.
No ones 3G network operates at the rated capacity...Usage actually is the reason they slow down. Verizon may feel faster in some places because they distribute across more towers. In most nationwide surveys of actual data performance AT&T is actually the fastest of the crappy service they all provide.
Sure. Because AT&T gives a **** about that. They didn't do it to gouge their customers at all.
And quit spouting your 98% number as if it means "98% of users never go over 2GB" instead of "98% of users in a month don't go over 2GB".
I think expanding the market for iPhone customers is actually a valid and in fact only reason for the 200MB plan. You can not see the 200MB plan as anything but that. It's existence is only a benefit to low bandwidth customers. If they were simply out to gouge everyone they would have only created the $25/2GB plan.
I'm mostly pissed about the ipad bait & switch.
I think this is understandable. The freedom to turn on and off unlimited data was an advertised feature.
You may be too young to remember this, but there was a time when we all paid by the byte for our networking. The world was not a better place then.
I am not too young to remember that time, and I did not like it either. I also operated an ISP right at the time unlimited Internet access became popular. I have spent the past 15 years working with service providers as a consultant on capacity planning for their data networks. It is not uncommon at all to see less than 2% of customers utilizing more than 50% of available resources. This has become an untenable situation for data service providers across the board.
Unlimited minutes work because there is a finite limit to the amount of time a person can keep a single device connected. The amount of network bandwidth required to sustain that connection is also finite.
The same is not true for a data. Theoretically a user can use their maximum bandwidth 24 hours a day. If you reduce the available bandwidth to confine the data usage to reasonable levels, all customers will suffer with slower performance. If you artificially restrict the "bandwidth hogs", they will sue you. On a mobile network the bandwidth hogs will be umm mobile making it difficult to predict bandwidth utilization. In short the only choice they have offering unlimited data is to ultimately lose money or offer sub-standard performance. ALL 3G networks in the US currently offer normal performance far below their rated capacity.
The problem exists to a lesser extent for land based services, but it is normally cheaper and much easier to add capacity and your heavy users tend to stay in one spot so you can make adjustments accordingly. (I realize this does not stop cable companies from testing/implementing caps).
The iPad change is troublesome. AT&T knew all of this going into it. They can not offer up ignorance as an excuse. Existing iPad owners should be able to retain the ability to activate and deactivate the old unlimited plan for some reasonable life of the device. The way they handled the iPhone was fair and proper.
